Endangered Species

This is an letter to Congress by me regarding the Dec. 2001 "Lynxgate" controversy, the ultra-conservative backlash it unleashed, and how the story was based entirely on rumors, pseudoscience, and professional negligence by the Washington Times who originally "broke" the story.

This is an article by conservation writer Ted Williams on the Lynxate incident from the May 2002 edition of Audubon magazine. Reprinted here with the author's kind permission. For more of Ted's outstanding, no-nonsense environmental reporting, see my Ted Williams Archive.

A letter by me written in response to a speech given by Jim Buchal to the Kitsap Alliance of Property Owners in Washington state that was published in a Washington-based online sportsmen’s’ forum. Buchal, is a Portland, OR based lawyer for industry and property rights special interests who is known for his confrontational manner and vociferous opposition to science-based salmon recovery efforts. In the referenced speech he claims that genetic diversity and riparian spawning habitat have nothing to do with the health of salmon populations, and viciously attacks the science and scientists behind the research on salmon ecology. In my response I address the pseudoscience and poor reasoning with which he defends his claims and his generally abusive and unprofessional tone.

This article from Legal Affairs by Chris Mooney discusses the Fall 2002 Klamath River salmon kill (the largest in U.S. history) and how ultra-conservative special interests and the Bush Administration misrepresented, and even suppressed the relevant science and blocked all measures that would have prevented it. The Bush Administration has a long history of deliberately suppressing science in the service of agribusiness, polluting industries, and other well-funded ultra-conservative special interests.